“Kirstie Alley” | Aug 19 2000
A woman – a young woman presumably, although I don’t know that for a fact – recently emailed me about my short story Kinkajou. If you haven’t read this story, the kinkajou of the title is owned by Kirstie Alley, and much of action takes place on Kirstie Alley’s estate. However, the story has almost nothing to do with Kirstie Alley, who puts in a cameo appearance on the other end of a cell phone call. My correspondent said that she was a big fan of Kirstie Alley and that she wanted to know if the story was “real,” by which I assume she meant true (obviously the story was real; she read it). I debated whether to write her back. Would you have written her back? Probably you would have because you are a nicer person than me. The fact is, I didn’t want to tell her what was true and what wasn’t because I hate that question. Admittedly, I bring it on myself by writing my stories in the first person, but I still don’t like it. So unless you happen to be my girlfriend and the story happens to concern a romantic relationship, I will either refuse to answer such questions or change the subject.
However, tonight as I was cleaning up my email In Box (I like to keep my In Box empty by either deleting stuff or saving it to other folders), I came across the woman’s email again and decided for some reason to write her back. Why did I decide this? Well, you shall see why I decided this. The catch, though, is that while I decided to write her back, I decided not to answer her question. That is, I decided to write her back in order to tell her why I could not answer her question. This was an asinine idea; I come up with some really asinine ideas sometimes, and this was one of them. Here is what I wrote:
Dear
A man signs a shovel and so he digs.
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